Assignment

Subject:
Environmental engineering
Topic:
Effect of aerosols on precipitation
Submitted to:
Sir Hafiz Tauqeer
Submitted by:
Rabia Ghazanfar
11011561-011

Effect of aerosols on precipitation

What are aerosols?
An aerosol is a colloid of fine solid particles or liquid droplets, in air or another gas.[1] Aerosols
can be natural or not. There are little particles in the atmosphere that are so small and light they
can float in air. These particles are called aerosols. They may be small but they have the ability to
change climate. Some aerosols are a natural part of the atmosphere - coming from erupting
volcanoes, sea salt, and wildfires. However, burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas has let
lots more aerosols loose in the air. Aerosols are a part of air pollution. They are dangerous to
human health and they also dampen the effect of global warming.
Aerosols in the atmosphere can change the amount of solar energy that is reflected away from
Earth. Different types of aerosols react differently when hit with sunlight. Sea salt particles
reflect sunlight back out into space. Black carbon particles from burning of wood or fossil fuels
absorb most of the sunlight that hits them.
Aerosols help clouds form and clouds have an impact on climate. The millions of little droplets
of water that make up a cloud each need a little particle, like an aerosol, to condense upon. More
aerosols can create more clouds. Different types of clouds may have different impacts on climate
and this is a topic that scientists are still exploring. But in general, clouds reflect incoming solar
radiation back out to space.

Effect of aerosol on precipitation:

Whereas aerosols can influence climate by scattering light and changing Earths reflectivity, they
can also alter the climate via clouds. On a global scale, these aerosol indirect effects typically
work in opposition to greenhouse gases and cause cooling. While greenhouse gases disperse
widely and have a fairly consistent impact from region to region, aerosol effects are less
consistent, partly because of how the particles affect clouds.
clouds form when enough water vapor condenses. Thats true, but aerosols play a critical role in
the process. In fact, most clouds owe their existence to aerosols that serve as the tiny seeds,
called cloud condensation nuclei.
Natural aerosolsoften sulfates, sea salt or ammonium saltsare the most common
condensation nuclei in pristine environments. Polluted air, in contrast, usually contains much
higher concentrations of water-soluble particles, which means pollution-rich clouds tend to have
more numerous, but smaller, droplets. The small droplets make polluted clouds look brighter
than they would otherwise be. Just as many bits of crushed ice give light more surfaces to reflect
offappearing brighter than a solid cube of iceif the water in a cloud is divided into a larger
number of smaller droplets, it will scatter more light and become more reflective.

Brighter clouds, in turn, block sunlight from reaching Earths surface, shading the planet and
producing net cooling. This cloud brightening effectcalled the cloud albedo effectmay
have a big impact on the climate, though only in recent years has it been possible to start
quantifying the effect.
This impact of aerosols is clearly visible in ship tracks, bright streaks in marine clouds that look
like airplane contrails. In the absence of ships, sea salt particles and the natural sulfates produced
by phytoplankton seed most marine clouds. However, the exhaust from ship smokestacks make
trails of sulfates and other aerosols that form long, bright clouds.
Overall, clouds are thought to cool Earths surface by shading about 60 percent of the planet at
any one time and by increasing the reflectivity of the atmosphere. Given that, just a 5 percent
increase in cloud reflectivity could compensate for the entire increase in greenhouse gases from
the modern industrial era in the global average. Likewise, long-term decreases in cloudiness
could have major impacts.
However, aerosols are distributed around the planet differently than greenhouse gases, so the
effects do not simply cancel each other. Parsing out how cloudsas well as feedback cycles
involving cloudsaffect regional climate systems remains a high priority for climatologists.
Aerosols also have complex effects on clouds and precipitation. Broadly speaking, aerosols are
thought to suppress precipitation because the particles decrease the size of water droplets in
clouds. However, under some environmental conditions, aerosols can lead to taller clouds that
are more likely to produce lightning and strong downpours. In a few places, meteorologists have
even detected a cycle in which the frequency of thunderstorms is connected to mid-week peaks
in aerosol emissions.

Aerosol type plays an important role in determining how aerosols affect clouds. Whereas
reflective aerosols tend to brighten clouds and make them last longer, the black carbon from soot
can have the opposite effect. Studies of pollution over the Indian Ocean and biomass burning
smoke in the Amazon have shown that the black carbon warms the surrounding atmosphere and
can cause cloud droplets to evaporate. This process, called the semi-direct effect, turns clouds
into a smoky haze that suppresses precipitation.
Current estimates suggest the cooling driven by aerosol indirect effects is less than half as much
as the warming caused by greenhouse gases when averaged over the globe. But these indirect
effects are highly uncertain and vary considerably in space and time. Therefore, on smaller space
and time scales, the climate effects of aerosols can be significant.